Positively

So how do we deal with the hatred and condemnation, the judgment, the power plays that try to make us feel like we're wrong when what we actually have is simply a difference of opinion? 

This is something I am trying to be mindful of. I'm trying to be aware of the ways that negativity simply surrounds us these days, and I'm trying to be diligent about not letting myself get sucked in. Of course, like everyone, I fail at this goal sometimes, but I'm trying. 

I'm trying to be more intentional about sharing things that I like. About putting positivity into the world. About noticing the good things and making comments about them. 

I'm trying to be more intentional about sticking to my opinions and not backing down. You don't like red candies? *shrug* I still do. They're still my favorite. I'm still going to like them. So I'll say that. I'll simply say, "Oh, well, I like them." 

Why? Because there's no reason not to. 

We form our opinions - our likes, our dislikes, our positions on the issues, our perspectives on life - through our experiences. Through our tastes. Through our own personal lenses that have experienced the world in a certain way. And while we should be open to things that expand our vision and enlarge our experience of the world, we should not be bullied by things that try to diminish the life we have lived and the way that we have lived it with the tools that God has given us to navigate it. 

I think sometimes, being steadfast about the little things that don't seem to matter much helps us - and others around us - to build a tolerance for the bigger things. 

If I shrug and say that I still like red candies, while at the same time accepting that my friends apparently don't, we learn to live together in a new way. You know what happens? We start to share. 

Get away from the candies for a minute and move with me to chips. Potato chips. When the store's got them on sale, I buy the variety box of little chip bags to take in my lunch to work. But I can't eat the barbecue ones because of a food allergy. One of my friends at work saw me eating the white cheddar popcorn one day and asked me if I liked it, and I said sure, I like it. She said she buys the same box, but nobody in her family would eat the white cheddar popcorn. I told her I buy the box, but I can't eat the barbecue ones. She told me they are her favorite. 

There are places in this world where this simple conversation devolves into an argument - however serious or not - about what's the best and how you can't possibly not like something or you can't possibly like something. We could have spoken over each other forever, trying to figure out how to justify that one of us likes something the other one doesn't and how completely backward and wrong that is. 

Instead, we just trade chips. She brings me the white cheddar popcorn that her family won't eat, and I bring her the barbecue chips that I can't. We just put them in each others' offices. It's that simple. 

How has our world forgotten that it's that simple? 

So I'm on a mission to make it that simple again, at least in my own life. I'm on a mission to keep saying I like the things I like and saying I don't like the things that I don't like and letting you like your own thing and dislike what you dislike and not making one of those things necessarily wrong. Not letting hatred and condemnation and judgment and power plays come into the conversation. 

And at the same time, I'm being more intentional about being positive, too. 

Because if you look at the comments sections (as we started with this conversation), it seems everyone is all-too-ready to jump in and tell you what they hate. I don't want to be like that. So I'm on the lookout for the good in the world, and I'm ready to speak it. And if someone disagrees with me, then okay. You know what? I still think it's good. 

And that's okay.